Kuala Lumpur: The government of Israel has confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in Red Sea city of Neom last Sunday. According to sources, Netanyahu secretly flew to the Kingdom and held a meeting with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and US State Secretary Mike Pompeo. The move comes months after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel signed a peace deal, ‘Abraham Accord’, in order to establish diplomatic and trade deals between both the gulf countries.
Israeli media, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and country media have claimed that PM and top spy agency Mossad’s chief Yosef Meir Cohen met MBS and Pompeo in Neom, far north of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coastline city built by the Crown Prince.
Meanwhile, the meeting between both leaders declined by Riyadh. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan has denied the media claims soon after the reports of a meeting between MBS and Netanyahu broke out, said in his tweet, “I have seen press reports about a purported meeting between HRH the Crown Prince and Israeli officials during the recent visit by Pompeo. No such meeting occurred. The only officials present were American and Saudi”.
There are several reports that the outgoing Trump administration has been trying to establish the normalise relation between Israel and other Arab countries to join the peace deal before president-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on 20 January.